Study: Swine Flu Likely Claimed Quarter of a Million Lives

The A(H1N1) “swine flu” 2009 pandemic probably claimed over a quarter of a million lives — 15 times more than the 18,500 reported, a paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal said Tuesday.

The elevated toll underlined the need for better planning and vaccine distribution, said a team of epidemiologists and physicians who made a statistical model based on population and infection estimates to present what they believe is a more accurate picture of the pandemic’s reach.

“This study is one of the first to provide a global estimate of deaths caused by the 2009 H1N1 virus,” lead author Fatimah Dawood of the US government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told AFP in an email exchange.